Coventry Telegraph Letters: Working hard to resolve leak problem

AS assistant director of repair services for Whitefriars I would like to update PB Stanton “Whitefriars aware of damp” (Letters, July 19) that we are focusing on Alpha House, and inform him of the facts.

AS assistant director of repair services for Whitefriars I would like to update PB Stanton “Whitefriars aware of damp” (Letters, July 19) that we are focusing on Alpha House, and inform him of the facts.

Firstly, I would like to reassure Mr Stanton that the block has been independently surveyed and this has proven that Alpha House is structurally sound and does not inherently suffer from damp.

Sadly, Mr Stanton is right that there is water damage in the block. This is the result of leaks from water pipes which we did not identify as quickly as we would have hoped, due in part to residents not allowing us access to their homes. In a tower block a single leak will affect numerous properties. The difficulty can be tracing the source, as the place where the leak materialises is rarely the point of the cause.

Recently we co-ordinated access to all of the flats in one corner of the building which enabled us to find four leaks, which we remedied. Two of these were due to the corrosion of fittings, which is our responsibility, and two resulted from occupiers’ faulty appliances and their failure to inform us.

We will now repeat this exercise of seeking out and mending leaks in the other three corners of the building.

I would like to apologise to everyone who has suffered while we have struggled to deal with this issue. We are now improving our procedures and I urge residents to inform us of any problems and allow us access to solve them.